Preview

Aubade Poem

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
682 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Aubade Poem
Analysis of Aubade

He is lonely and depress with the world. He drinks every single, work to support himself and stay up all night rethinking about his useless life. He is dark outside and cold from the inside, no one can see him. He is afraid of what might happen if he takes another step into life. He begin to describe his emotional feelings on paper, thinking about the time that he will be the next one laying in the grave, he is fearing death. In the poem, “Aubade,” Philip Larkin take the reader into his pathless journey, letting his audience know what he does and what will happen. He accomplished this through the use of imagery, poetic devices, and organization of the poem. Throughout this poem, the narrator uses imagery by describing his fear of death and the unexpected of death. In the first stanza, lines 1-2, “I work all day, and get half drunk at night, waking at four to soundless dark,” show what he does on his daily basis. He tell people what he is doing without feeling shame, “ work all day” you can picture him working at factory doing the same thing all over again, meanwhile he come and get “half drunk.” It seem like the narrator can’t sleep and he is depress. His depressing phrases, he begins to describe what is outside of his house when stepping into the society of death. In lines 3-4, “In time the curtain…till then I see… Unresting death,” he goes from light behind his curtain, the brightness he faces in the morning when going to work and the death road along the way. He emphasizes the “unresting death,” explaining that he will soon die and he makes all thoughts impossible. “The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse- The good not done, the love not give,” is the mephator Philip uses to establish the meaning of the title. Aubade is the lovers separate at dawn, so other words it doesn’t mean two couples, it is the relationship between death and the narrator. The death can be seen as a lover; because the narrator spends the whole time in bed

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    On Frost at Midnight

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the second stanza, he is reminiscing about his childhood and how he felt imprisoned in school (gazed upon the bars). He speaks of a fluttering stranger (line 26), which seems to indicate that not that person is fluttering, but his eyelids are. His eyes are unclosed, because he is daydreaming, but soon he actually falls asleep and thinks about his teacher, who he detests. He describes the anticipation of being able to go outside again only by hearing the bells of the old church-tower, since he is only looking out the window and waiting for the doors to open for anybody to pick him up and take him outside.…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    To introduce the story, in the first sentence he hints towards death. Describing the Duchess, "looking as if she was alive." In a Fresco painting, which was very popular at the time in Ferrara, Italy. The navigation towards death implies that it will be a dark story, and to increase the darkness of the story it is ficticious. Instantly you can recognise the relentless rhyming couplets that are throughout the whole poem, this creates a cheerful, positive mood on such a dark story resulting in a spooky effect.…

    • 906 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Upon reading the poem, imagery can be found throughout the entire poem. For example, in the first two lines you can imagine a doll being put away like a dead child in a chest, you cannot bring a dead child back to life. This is the burial of her childhood only to keep her memories and carry them with her for the rest of her life. Also, the second to last line where she is “wound,” twisted, “like the guts of a clock,” referring to her stomach. She feels a sense of anxiety here. This is her final emotion to conclude the poem. She fears growing up because of the responsibilities she will have to take on, the shame she felt when her period started, will…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are many ups and downs, fast slopes, and steep hills throughout life and beyond all these things, life has a deeper meaning than what meets the eye. It is not uncommon to watch people speed through life while moments pass them by. This is portrayed in “Aubade” by Philip Larkin and “The Shout” by Simon Armitage. In “Aubade” the author describes a lonely man who views life as tragic mistake. He sees people not giving there all throughout life and cutting themselves short of their expectations. In “The Shout” the author depicts a time where they were experimenting how far the human voice was traveling. As the person was shouting they soon disappeared and received a gunshot wound to the head while the shout remains in the authors head. Throughout…

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Both Larkin and Abse write about death in a way which suggests to the reader that it's an overriding concern in their life. Although this is more explicitly expressed through Larkin's poems, the fact it is a dominant theme in Abse's 'Welsh Retrospective' is evidence in itself that such fear existed in his mind. Both poets go on to explore the effect of death draining life of its worth.…

    • 1072 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the first stanza, we find out about his mothers death. Enjambment is used to speed up the pace of the poem, and show how quickly someone's whole live can change, like in the phrase“In the moment it takes a life to pass/ from waking to sleeping” The phrase “from waking to sleeping” highlights the opposites in what he and his mother are doing, as she passes from life to death. The word 'sleeping' creates quiet a gentle image, and suggests that her death was not unexpected, and perhaps was drawn out and painful. Sleep is a very relaxed and calm time, the only time when the human mind can escape from problems in the day, so perhaps the idea of his mother falling asleep is comforting, like she has now stopped suffering and can rest happy.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The first line contains an image of a “bronze butterfly” sleeping on a trunk. This stagnant description of such a beautiful creature demonstrates a slowly moving life, one of which hasn’t achieved much. The trunk that the butterfly is sleeping on is colored black, representing the man’s missed opportunities to leave the farm. The next line portrays a leaf blowing down a ravine found behind an empty house. Obviously the empty house and the later heard cowbells in the distance (implying that the cows are leaving the farm) are clear images of the man’s loneliness. The speaker moves on to spot some horse manure. This dung, after being left for over a year, has dried and is turning into stones. The changing of this manure symbolizes the man’s changing into an old, lifeless man. Just as the manure does, the longer the man sits there and waits for something, the more prone he is to dry up and waste his life. Before the last line of the poem, the speaker mentions the setting sun and the evening that approaches as he lays back in his hammock. A chicken hawk, a well-known hunter, flies by the man and looks for his home, just as the man is looking for his home — or the place where he belongs. As the evening envelops the man, all of these apparently “beautiful” images (yet symbolically depressing messages) pushes the man to realize that his life has become…

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Crossing the Swamp

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages

    At the beginning of the poem, there is a use of cacophonic sounds of “branching vines.” “Burred faintly belching bogs” are used to describe the ugly sounds of the swamp as the character takes a step forward; which only add more to the misery and struggle of the speaker. The repetition of the word “Here”” is also very unique because it is emphasizing the location of where the character is being tortured by having to walk into this swamp of misery and struggle. There is another sound the speaker describes “that sink silently on to the black slack earthsoup” (lines 20-22). This diction considered as imagery, because it is making a comparison between the swamp and earthsoup.…

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poet uses a morbid tone and grim diction along with cold imagery to attest the austerity of a man losing his livelihood. He uses words such as black, cold, and dead to describe a dark time in a person's life. Throughout the poem the poet has a morbid tone as he shows the darkness associated with this person's troubles. Imagery is used in this poem to display a person's death and insignificance of his life to the world around him. Lines 21-24 are a perfect example of the poet's use, "Black water, smooth above the weir/ Like starry velvet in the night,/ Though ruffled once, would soon appear/ The same as ever to the sight," which means that when the lady jumped into the dark water, it would soon consume her and no one would know of her whereabouts, or even notice her dead.…

    • 394 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sunny Prestatyn Larkin

    • 1343 Words
    • 6 Pages

    With reference to three poems studied so far discuss how Larkin presents the theme of illusion and reality.…

    • 1343 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Crossing the Swamp

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The entirety of the poem is a metaphor of a man's crisis in life. The first part of the poem, or until "into the black, slack," is dark. This portion depicts the darkness's of life, such as death and the hard ships. The third stanza mentions "…here/ is struggle, / closure --/ pathless, seamless / peerless mud… "which is a reference to life. Life is full of struggles like the struggles one would have trying to cross a swamp. There is no clear path or a person aiding you while you cross the mode, as there is no one to help you through the "hipholes, hammocks" in life. The mans' "… bones / knock together at the pale / joints …" which shows that the man's struggles in life have been long and tedious. The struggle has been so lengthy that it has even begun to wear on the bones and joints in his body. Imagery is used to give the readers feeling of disgust and sorrow. Words such as "mud," "dark blurred / faintly belching bogs" give a negative connotation and make people think of darkness, specifically, the darkness's in life.…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    He states, "Throughout the first five stanzas of the poem, the speaker spends the lines generally talking about death and how one should stand up in the face of…

    • 1570 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    An article, “Metaphor and Literature,’ defines metaphor as a tool that produces “meaningful communication” (MacCormac 59). Similarly, by adding visual metaphors in her poetry, Smith tries to submerge the readers into a deeper level of experience about abstract issues i.e. death and grief. She writes, “You stepped out of the body/Unzipped like a coat” (92-93). Here, Smith gives an insight to the belief that the soul leaves the body after death, which she imagines occurred with her father’s soul. She is trying to give the notion that death involves the separation of the soul. Likewise, in the later part of the poem, Smith uses different species of extinct tigers, “Javan,” “Bali,” and “Caspian,” to symbolize her father (80-82). The emptiness felt by her causes her to imagine her father as a rare species, who might also be alone in heaven. She imagines that her father might have also felt the deep pain in losing one dear to him. Smith describes this loneliness as “a solitary country” (84). However, later, she finds comfort in the fact that her father is no longer in fear. “Night kneels at your feet like a gypsy glistening with jewels” (90). “Night,” is considered to be a symbol of darkness, a time when people usually hide. Smith, adding these images throughout her poetry, tries to say that fear is eliminated in heaven .She emphasizes that her father experiences real power in his…

    • 1631 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    This is done by showing events through the eyes of the recently awoken soul. By making our eyes the spirit’s eyes, the poet is able to immerse the reader into the spirt world where the reader is not allowed to bring preexisting thoughts on things such as laundry. Furthermore, this poem begins with “The eyes open to the cry of pulleys” which makes the reader want to see what the eyes are seeing. Throughout the poem, the poet is continually playing with the reader’s sight in this spirit world with images such as “the sun acknowledges with a warm look.” These unfamiliar images created in this spirit world create an incubation chamber where complicated thoughts on qualities can be represented through things such as…

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the poem, Hughes utilizes imagery to increase the pleasure gained from reading this piece. In lines five through seven, the poem’s speaker describes the musicians setting as having a “pale dull pallor” (Hughes 1659). Along with his description of the setting, the speaker states that the musician “did a lazy sway…” (Hughes 1659). Because the speaker describes the setting as lacking color and the musician’s actions as “lazy” (Hughes 1659), the speaker’s description of the musician’s setting and actions depict a man that is lacking life and energy. In lines 33-35, the speaker states: “The singer stopped playing and went to bed / While the Weary Blues echoed through his head. / He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead” (Hughes 1660). Because the passage refers to the sleeping musician as a stone or a dead man, one can see that no matter how soundly the musician sleeps, or how deeply he slips into a subconscious state, he is still plagued by the struggles that create his “Weary Blues” (Hughes 1660). With the application of imagery to the poem, Hughes creates an enjoyable piece of literature.…

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics